A Republic foster parent is charged with molesting the children he was trusted to care for. Two different children say Mark D. O’Brien abused them while they lived with him at his home on Maple Avenue in Republic.

Maryland's second-largest foster care provider failed to track background checks, training and other requirements for its foster parents, putting the children at risk, according to state officials who are moving to suspend new placements in its homes.

What would have been a perfectly normal day for Shakira Wahab, living in the UK with her husband Fayaz and three kids, turned out into a long drawn out nightmare, resulting in her landing behind bars and having her children taken away from her and fostered with strangers.

Adding to the possible reforms of Oklahoma's child-welfare system, the legislatively created Foster Care System Improvement Task Force has pitched in its suggestions starting with "adequately funding" the recommendations.

A bill that could change the way state investigators handle cases of child abuse or neglect is working its way through legislative committees in Tallahassee, almost a year after the death of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona exposed major flaws in Florida's child welfare system.

Gabriel Aubry and Halle Berry's constant legal bickering over custody of their 3-year-old daughter is prompting concerns about the child's emotional well-being. Officials with the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services are recommending therapy for little Nahla.

Events are being organised in London as part of the UK's first ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Adoption and Fostering Week.

Note: This is what we call Target Marketing. They must target new markets because other markets are flooded. The markets are flooded because of an overabundant supply of product (stolen kids). It's a matter of business.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to build on reforms to the state's juvenile justice system by proposing the "Close to Home" initiative which would allow New York City's youth to be treated in facilities near their homes.

Now we know that computers don't help children learn and that drugs don't help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2]

The number of human-trafficking cases increases significantly in cities that host major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics, according to children's rights advocates and law enforcement officials. In the weeks leading up to the 2010 World Cup, 40,000 sex workers were take to South Africa, and the attorney general of Texas anticipated 10,000 cases of human trafficking leading up to the Super Bowl last year in Dallas, according to published reports.

The state work group examining last year's spike in adoption abuse cases — including that of a Bunker Hill-area couple accused of starving five adopted children — will hold its first meeting next month.

After scandals such as Baby P, many social workers feel criticised from all sides. The difficult nature of their job is revealed as the BBC is given unprecedented access to the Bristol child protection team.

Note: Oh the poor things... Stealing children and expecting not to be criticized. Imagine that.

It is internationally agreed that the rationale behind trying children in juvenile courts and committing them to children detention facilities or prison is not punitive, but to convert and enable them to reintegrate in society upon their release.

Today is January 29, 2012. For Derek Hoare, this simply means it’s day number 228 — the number of days his 10-year-old daughter with autism has been kept from him by Child Protective Services in Canada.

An Indiana University School of Medicine study has determined that a patient’s socioeconomic status has more influence than race on physician diagnosis of whether a child’s injury was accidental or caused by abuse.

In the past five years, 43 Colorado children died from abuse or neglect after entering the child welfare program. Every one of those deaths was marked by a policy violation or sparked concern in the way the case was handled by county social workers.

The Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne has apologised to mothers who placed their children for adoption, after a report by Australian Catholic University’s Professor Shurlee Swain outlined the hospital’s role in past practices.

Should Amazon refuse to sell certain titles of books because some customers find the content offensive? According to Milli Hill of Somerset, United Kingdom, a parenting columnist for Somerset Life Magazine and blogger for The Mule, the answer is a resounding yes.

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, currently under house arrest as he awaits trial for over 50 counts of child sex abuse, will ask a judge if he can regain contact with his grandchildren, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reports.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services will formally recommend that Halle Berry and her baby daddy, Gabriel Aubry, be interviewed together in connection with allegations that Gabriel pushed the nanny while holding their three-year-old daughter, Nahla, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.

On the night he killed his two-year-old son before turning the gun on himself, Ralph Michael Utley first violently attacked the boy's mother, punching her, kicking her and tearing out a handful of hair.

An attorney for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn faced blistering questioning by legislators Friday on why the governor didn't quickly fire the head of the state's child-welfare agency last year after a report of fraudulent billing under his watch.

Gabriel Aubry has been formally questioned by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services in light of Halle Berry’s child abuse claims brought on by her nanny after she was allegedly pushed into a wall.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has formally interviewed Halle Berry's baby daddy, Gabriel Aubry, in connection with allegations that he pushed a nanny while she was holding the former couple's three year old daughter, Nahla, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.

The governor said he wants to eliminate statewide funding of nearly one million dollars. Stop Child Abuse Now, a local organization, helps children from all around Virginia who are victims of abuse and neglect.

Soon after accepting the governor's offer to head the Department of Children and Families, Joette Katz paid a visit to our editorial board. The appointment was a shocker. To take one of the most challenging jobs in state government, arguably the most challenging, Ms. Katz had surrendered her prestigious position as a state Supreme Court justice.

The head of Nebraska's child welfare services told lawmakers Thursday that a proposal to reclaim case management duties from private contractors would destabilize the system that serves abused and neglected children.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Can scientists predict if a child may eventually become the victim of abuse or neglect just by looking at patterns of how parents and children solve problems together? That’s the aim of a new study in Colorado State University’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies.

Note: Great. More power to take kids without evidence of parental wrong doing.

Kentucky child-protection officials asked the Kentucky Court of Appeals on Thursday to block a lower-court's ruling that limits its ability to remove details from public documents about children who died or nearly died from abuse and neglect.

A class action lawsuit against the state of Illinois alleges state welfare agencies illegally withhold treatment for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. The lawsuit could affect more than 18,000 youth with severe mental illnesses and emotional disturbances in Illinois.

The federal government has won its appeal in Divisional Court against a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 16,000 aboriginal children taken from reserves in Ontario in what’s known as the “Sixties Scoop.”

Mental health professionals will tell you there are children across the Tampa Bay area who have been through hell. Many have been ripped out of the care of their parents due to abuse, neglect, or even death. Some are forced to live in a stranger's home and, in some instances, children in state care will live in dozens of foster care homes while waiting to be adopted.

I have long argued that a bit of sunshine would do a great deal of good in the world of juvenile justice, as secretive an institution as exists in American life. Delaware officials might just agree, at least in part. Good for them:

Note: Juvenile and Family Courts are supposed to be secret. It's how they cover their tracks.

Ruling: The Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission awarded benefits to a worker who sustained injuries when she fell in the restroom at work because her employment was a contributing factor in the accident.

Note: It was her own fault for not paying attention to where she was going.

At Wednesday’s annual State of the Judiciary Address, Georgia’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein urged lawmakers to overhaul the state’s juvenile justice system, asking legislators to support more rehabilitative services for youth as opposed to incarceration of juvenile offenders.

A Virginia Beach couple has been charged with felony child neglect. Police say they weren't feeding their five-month-old properly. But they're telling NewsChannel 3 that it’s being blown way out of proportion.

Note: The Child Protective Industry is great at making mountains out of mole hills.

A legislative committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would require state child welfare caseworkers to apply a "clear and convincing" evidentiary standard before removing a child from a relative's care based on the relative's health or age.

JANET Tough intended to keep her baby but she knew she'd have a fight on her hands. After her monthly check-ups at the Royal Women's Hospital, she was referred routinely to the social worker for a lecture that had become painfully predictable.

An influential U.S. senator is grilling officials in nearly three-dozen states, demanding to know how they are cracking down on physicians who prescribe massive amounts of potentially dangerous prescription drugs.

In a 20-year-period, fewer children were killed by abuse and neglect in Sacramento County when programs aimed at troubled families were funded, according to a report presented to the Board of Supervisors.

Lawmakers on Wednesday will get their first look at a raft of bills aimed at improving the state's Child Protective Services after a gubernatorial task force was formed in the wake of several high-profile child deaths last summer.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A federal court jury found in favor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Friday in a case involving alleged wrongdoing by sheriff’s deputies and social workers from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

Foster kids were at the Iowa Statehouse today as part of a group called Achieving Maximum Potential or AMP. They represent youth service groups from across Iowa and had plenty of suggestions for lawmakers today.

Type “California” into a Google news search and chances are good that your browser will turn up headlines about prisons. Since October 1, 2011 the state has started to deliver on a mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court to remove 33,000 people from its bloated prison population. In this fast and furious process called realignment, it is easy to forget a crucial population: children. The majority of incarcerated people in California are parents. As described in my last post, realignment offers enormous opportunity to change the status quo corrections practices as non-sexual, non-violent, and non-serious offenders will now be sentenced to serve in county jails. Can children benefit from it?

There is no relief for the 13 HIV positive children, including seven girls, rescued last week from Gurgaon after allegations of sexual abuse were made against the owner of the NGO that was sheltering them. The Gurgaon administration has not been able to find a permanent shelter for these children, even as the south Delhi NGO they were shifted to has expressed inability to provide them with permanent accommodation. The NGO says there is not enough space and infrastructure to take them in.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Joe Paterno, the former Penn State football coach who was among the most admired figures in the annals of collegiate sports but whose reputation was shattered in the wake of a child abuse scandal involving one of his longtime assistants, died Jan. 22. He was 85.

The rate of child abuse and neglect rose by more than one-third in Michigan during the past decade, the result of high unemployment and inadequate social programs, according to a new report released Tuesday.

Nebraska lawmakers says the state is failing to keep track of important case information about children who are in state custody due to abuse, neglect, and other problems.
Some blame the problem on an outmoded computer system as well as high turnover and overwhelming caseloads. They say it has complicated their efforts to overhaul the state’s child welfare system in the wake of a report that found substantial problems with a privatization effort that began in 2009.

In December attorney Joe Baldacci filed suit for Russell and Dr. Ellie Handler against officials of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office. Almost immediately the state had the documents of the suit – which alleges DHHS and Waldo Sherriff Department negligence, misconduct and fraud – sealed.

Note: In Maine, they have the sheep convinced that they have this great National Model child welfare system. Of course they're gonna hide anything that proves otherwise.

A Michigan law favors the paternity rights of an imprisoned Kentucky man over those of the biological father of a 5-year-old girl.

The state Paternity Act of 1956 prohibits a man claiming to be a biological father from seeking paternity if the child's mother was married to another man between the time the child was conceived and born.

Football coaching legend Joe Paterno has died of lung cancer. He was 85. Although the former coach of Penn State football team gained notoriety in the sexual abuse case involving his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky; to many Paterno remains to this day, the greatest football coach.

As a largely Christian country, we profess to be particularly concerned about the welfare of children, but ultimately we have had a dismal record when it comes to the protection of vulnerable young people.

Allegations of neglect and abuse against six Indiana children had been reported to the Indiana Department of Child Services last year before each child died, according to a newspaper report that raised questions about the quality of the agency's investigations and safety assessments and the services it provides to struggling families.

Passage of the Children & Family Services Improvement & Innovation Act will keep more families together, keep more children safe and allow Washington state to put limited dollars to the best possible use, writes state Rep. Ruth Kagi.

In the grocery store, a child goes through the produce isle picking up items and biting into them. When mom tries to stop him, he takes a bite out of her. Meanwhile, the child has managed to get the attention of shoppers and workers alike.

A child advocacy group legally obligated to investigate child deaths was allegedly denied access to investigative files of a high-profile case by attorneys with the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, according to emails obtained by the Tulsa World through the state's Open Records Act.

They may not always see eye to eye politically, but pols Christine Watkins and LaVar Christensen seem to have the same vision for tweaking child welfare and parental rights laws this legislative session.

Both veteran lawmakers are working up bills aimed at providing a course correction for a child welfare system they say doesn’t do enough to keep children with parents and other kin.

Lawmakers are prepared to grapple with Arizona's child-welfare agency in the wake of a series of highly publicized incidents where children were harmed despite abuse complaints being made to Child Protective Services.

Even as Norway refuses to entertain requests from India to hand over the custody of young Abhigyan and Aishwarya to their parents, the matter on Saturday reached Rashtrapati Bhavan as the grandparents of the two children met President Pratibha Devisingh Patil to seek her intervention in the matter.

2 Foster children are back in the care of CPS after they were missing for several hours. The children were reported missing from their foster home on the 4500 block of Hogan in Corpus Christi. The children, 8 year old Diamond and 6 year old Billy Boortz were placed in foster care yesterday and reportedly told a 3rd foster child their new foster mom was mean and that they were going back to live with their grandmother in Alice.

A 15-year-old South Lebanon Township boy was charged with aggravated assault after he head-butted a male Lebanon County Children & Youth caseworker while they were traveling in a van at Route 322 and Butler Road in West Cornwall Township at 2:37 p.m. Jan. 13, police said.

A Suisun City foster parent facing a homicide charge in connection with the death of an infant last year is now facing a civil lawsuit from the child's mother, according to documents filed in Solano County Superior Court.

Some bills filed in response to the death by abuse of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona could actually weaken the child-welfare network.

Note: Well duh!!! See what happens is whenever there is a high profile child death and CPS was involved in any way, there is always a knee-jerk reaction to fix all the problem that lead to the failure, either toughen child abuse laws, give them more power to investigate allegations, pump more money into the system, what have you.

Yet no matter how hard they try to perfect the process, there remains one problem which Ron White explains very well in the following video.

The newly retired judge whose parting order to sterilize a pregnant schizophrenic woman was overturned on appeal this week said yesterday she grappled with the case, while Gov. Deval Patrick, pressed on the matter yesterday, said he thinks she went too far.

For many divorced fathers in Israel, the declaration yesterday by Israel Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman that divorced parents must now share custody of children, may have come too late. Neeman has accepted recommendations by the Schnit Committee that joint parental custody be ordered in divorce cases involving young children, which the law defines as those up to age 6. Until now, most divorced fathers became visitors, being limited to seeing their children only a few hours a week.

A former state trooper will spend 20 years in prison for molesting a teenage foster child. 49-year-old James Norquay of Juda must also spend 15 years under extended supervision when he’s no longer behind bars. A Green County jury convicted Norquay last November on three felony counts of child sexual assault by a foster parent, two counts of incest, and a charge of second-degree child sex assault. State investigators said the incidents occurred at Norquay’s former home in the town of Clarno, where the girl was placed for foster care in late 2008 when she was 15. The man adopted the girl a year later. Officials said the molestation continued until January of last year, when the child was removed from the home following a state investigation.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

In a sharply critical decision, a judge has ordered a state agency to pay $16,550 in fines and $56,663 in legal costs to three newspapers for illegally withholding public records involving child abuse deaths and serious injuries.

A judge has fined the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services more than $16,000 for improperly withholding records on children who died or were hurt because of abuse and neglect, and he set rules limiting what information the agency may keep private in such cases.

On this blog, I have written often about the media's portrayal of the Child Welfare Issue. Today I'm going to move away from that, and show you why we are not all on the same page, and with the way things are moving, why we never will be.

This is a really interesting take on the control of information issue but it leaves out a very important factor in that both Google and Facebook are advertising giants and both earn most of their money through advertising methods. I remember in a marketing class I took, for example talking about cable TV providers doing a sort of psychological profile on television viewers based on their viewing habits, so that they could more effectively zero in on ones personality and tailor individualized and highly targeted advertising packages to each viewer with a Digital Cable Box, where you would get a different set of television commercials than I would even when watching the same program through the same service. Also ad in the companies that do data mining, who specialize in tracking people's tractable purchases, internet searches, cell phone calls etc and you have a wealth of individualized demographics to target in on in your advertising campaigns.

Politically, I can see this being of benefit to the powers that be by preventing us from all being on the same page. However, this probably also helps to explain why so many of these experienced foster parents and system sucks out there are so blind to the fact that that the child welfare system is a mess and is based on lies and fraud. They're never shown the truth, because the truth has become personalized.

A RISING number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being put on protection orders and placed in foster homes, even as the rates for non-indigenous children fall, an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report has found.

Elementary school students regularly hear and use negative comments such as “retard” or “you’re so gay” in their schools, posing additional challenges to administrators who are increasingly trying to combat name-calling and bullying, even in the youngest grades.

State child-protection workers applauded Gov. Steve Beshear for requesting an additional $21 million to hire more front-line social workers in his budget but told lawmakers Wednesday that more needs to be done to improve morale and working conditions.

​When an attorney first talked to Seattle Weekly about an anti-male bias in family court, one of the striking things was her gender. This was not some embittered male extremist, but a mainstream female lawyer who represents both women and men. And she's not the only one who sees the problem, as this week's cover story relates.

An upswing in immigrant deportations in 2011 has left thousands of American children living in foster care across the nation, often for years and sometimes longer, according to a report from a racial justice think tank.

In Arizona hundreds of children are abandoned and left in foster care or in the care of already burdened extended family when birth parents are arrested, detained and then “disappeared” into Arizona ICE detention facilities in Eloy, Florence and Phoenix. A press conference addressing the community impact of children left behind when their parents are detained and deported by ICE is scheduled for Tuesday, January 17, 10:00 am, at the Arizona State University School of Social Work campus, 340 N. Commerce Park Loop Suite 250, Tortolita Building, Tucson, Arizona. Over 20 family service providers and attorneys, as well as representatives of affected families, will participate in this press conference.

Sexual abuse victims often struggle for years with memories of the traumatic abuse they suffered as children. In some cases, the experiences are so traumatic that they block out (or repress) the memories.

The state police have arrested a Marion County man accused of falsely reporting multiple child abuse incidents.
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Scott said they learned that the child abuse claims were false. He said Spadafore admitted to calling the hotline so he could so he could sexually pleasure himself.

Note: See? See? See? Some people do get off on this shit!!!

I've seen a babystealer get off on the power trip. I do gotta admit that this is the first time I've come across an article where the guy got his jollies off of making a false report.

I guess we'll have to coin a new label: Child-Abuse-Hotline-o-sexual, Although Ms Tran prefers the term ChildAbuseHotlineophelia. Thoughts? Comments?

First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to delight middle schoolers in Virginia when she attended a special screening of her appearance on a Nickelodeon show, but the audience showed some displeasure, booing when she told them about the healthy food initiative that changes their school lunch menu.

Donna Koehn's article "Change is coming for child welfare" (front page, Jan. 4) needs to be considered in wider context. The $65 million state contract to protect Hillsborough's children will be taken from one private agency, Hillsborough Kids Inc., and given to another, Eckerd Community Alternatives, which already has contracts in the state. The article states: "Only Eckerd and HKI vied for the lucrative contract."

A teenage inmate who collapsed and died while playing basketball at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center Saturday had a history of high blood pressure and shouldn’t have been allowed to play, his grandmother said Sunday.